48 pages • 1-hour read
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir
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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Habib decides it is time to reconnect with their faith after coming out of the closet and working through their LGBTQ+ identity. Habib is worried that traditional Mosques and community centers will not accept them. They find an inclusive Mosque named the “Unity Mosque,” partly founded by the human rights lawyer El-Farouk Khaki. The Mosque is primarily attended by other LGBTQ+ Muslims.
Habib is shocked by how welcoming the space is. The Unity Mosque becomes a spiritual home for Habib, who explains that their faith is just as important as their LGBTQ+ identity. The two facets of Habib’s identity are inseparable, and they begin bringing potential romantic partners to the Mosque in order to demonstrate what their faith means to somebody who wishes to share their life.
Habib’s time at the Unity Mosque inspires them to begin a photography journey. They realize that there is almost no representation of LGBTQ+ Muslims: Had they seen such representation growing up, they may have been saved heartache. Habib believes that photographing LGBTQ+ Muslims would allow them to communicate about the LGBTQ+ Muslim experience in raw, unfiltered ways that bypass language barriers. They see this potential project as a democratic way of sharing struggles and experiences like theirs with the world at large. This project is eventually titled Just Me and Allah.
Habib tackles their project by befriending their subjects and getting to know their stories. Habib’s first subject is Zainab, a transgender woman. Zainab’s story is one of protracted struggle and resilience. She is an immigrant from Tunisia whose relationship to gender has fundamentally shaped her relationship to Islam. Habib and Zainab spend an entire day together before taking photographs as Zainab shows them around Montreal. Zainab leaves Habib with a quote that they regularly turn to for motivation, which begins “We have always been here” and provides the title of their memoir (116).
Chapter 11 Summary
Habib imagines what a stable, always-accepting home would have been like. They imagine an Edwardian-era house in Toronto where they had always been accepted and loved and where their mother formed a “mini-Rabwah” from the start. They envision this house full of books, learning, and love—a place where they could bring home their first girlfriend, Evelyn, without a second thought. This house never existed and represents an ideal of home that Habib did not have growing up.
Habib says that their upbringing has led to a fixation on the concept of home. Their reality growing up was one of upheaval, poverty, insecurity, and an instilled need to hide who they were. Likewise, their condominium with Peter was never home, either. Habib feels that they have been left somewhat rootless, despite their repaired relationship with their parents.
Habib begins seeing a therapist who suggests that they “re-parent” themself. They decide to come out to the world by writing an article titled “Gay Muslims Are Essential in the Global Fight Against Aids” in The Guardian. Shortly afterward, Habib has lunch with their mother and comes out to her. Their mother accepts them without a hitch. Habib wonders if they had misjudged their mother due to internalized anti-Muslim biases: They had assumed that such a religious Muslim woman would have rejected them or had misgivings about their LGBTQ+ identity. When Habib breaks up with Evelyn, their mother comforts them and tells them that their photography project is “very Muslim” of them, reaffirming both facets of their identity at once (126).
Chapter 12 Summary
In November 2016, Habib travels to the United States to give a keynote speech titled “Spirituality as a Radical Tool” at the University of North Carolina. Donald Trump was elected to the US presidency the night before the speech, and many of the attendants were rattled by the results. Trump ran on a platform of anti-Muslim hatred and scapegoating that culminated in the “Muslim ban,” which suspended refugee admission to the US and suspended entry into the United States from predominantly Muslim countries like Iraq and Yemen. Habib’s speech gives a momentary respite for LGBTQ+ and Muslim people affected by the presidential election.
After the speech, Habib meets with Saba and Laila, two LGBTQ+ southern Muslim women. Habib meets up with them with the intention of photographing them for their photography project. Habib is so moved by their resilience in the face of bigotry and discrimination in the South that they write an article about the two women titled “Queer Muslim Women From the South” in The Guardian. The two throw a party for Habib with their small Muslim community, and Habib witnesses first-hand how Saba and Laila’s community comes together to support one another. Saba and Laila rely on a heavily interconnected community to survive in a hostile environment. Likewise, Habib feels that they have formed a global network of solidarity with other LGBTQ+ Muslim people during their travels for their photography project and article writing.
Habib comes out to their father in their early thirties. He accepts them without any pushback. Their brother, Bilal, has also grown into a man who challenges anti-LGBTQ+ biases and biased expectations of Pakistani men. The generational difference between the two makes it hard for Bilal to understand why his sibling still identifies as a Muslim since Bilal does not remember Pakistan.
Habib ends the memoir with a letter to their seven-year-old self, as suggested by their therapist as part of “re-parenting” themself. The letter praises the seven-year-old Habib for being so curious and wanting to know everything about the world and urges them to hold this gift of curiosity close. The letter reminds them to breathe and remember that their parents are people, too, and will change drastically over the years. They urge their younger self to remember that their curiosity and desire to know things will eventually lead them to safety, self-assurance, and family.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Habib reconnects with their faith in Chapters 10-12 and begins Reconciling Faith and LGBTQ+ Identity. Habib’s personal connection to Allah helped them through the difficulties of adolescence (64), but ostracization from their Mosque after the dissolution of the arranged marriage made maintaining this connection difficult (70). Habib’s experience of their Mosque community is tied to their experience of the faith: Without the community offered by the Mosque, their identity as a Muslim weakens.
The Unity Mosque introduced in Chapter 10 also plays a role in Found Family and Finding One’s True Identity by bringing together Habib’s longing for religious community, their identity, and their faith. The Unity Mosque represents a confluence of all three themes of the memoir: The Mosque gives them community and family, nurtures their identity, and fixes the ostracization from Mosque life that had been held over previous generations in Habib’s family (such as when their mother is ostracized from her one community at the Mosque for the failure of the arranged marriage). The Unity Mosque represents the importance of intersectionality in understanding Habib’s experiences (See: Background). Habib is not Muslim in some instances and LGBTQ+ in others; Habib is always an LGBTQ+ Muslim and requires both community and space that is built for such an identity, one where they are not the minority as a queer person of color.
Habib’s habit of bringing romantic partners to the Mosque is symbolic of their intersectional identity. By bringing their partners to the Mosque, Habib refuses to partition some parts of their life (their faith and ethnicity) from the other (their queer identity and love life). The importance of the Unity Mosque in shaping Habib’s life reveals the multifaceted and complex identity they hold.
Chapter 12 broadens the scope of Habib’s considerations to the wider world of LGBTQ+ and Muslim politics. Habib has reached the end of their narrative journey within the memoir. Typically, memoirs present the beginning as the “anchor” that shapes the subject’s life and problems tackled within the memoir. The middle of the memoir involves complications, resolutions, and victories as the subject comes of age. Memoirs in this style typically end on broader-picture wisdom or advice. By Chapter 12, Habib has achieved confidence in their identity, reconnected with their faith, and become an advocate for people like them in the public sphere. Their own personal victories are dampened by an increasingly hostile political situation in North America, with the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (133), the rising tide of anti-Islamic biases in the United States under President Trump (127-28), and increasingly drastic anti-LGBTQ+ legislation (131).
Habib uses this bleak backdrop to contrast against their own resilience and the resilience of LGBTQ+ Muslim people in the Southern United States like Saba and Laila. Habib uses this contrast to rhetorically emphasize the need for community, chosen family, and care for one another to endure bigotry and hatred. Beginning the chapter with a slew of dire circumstances is a rhetorical strategy that allows Habib to reveal unexpected moments of hope, such as their brother, Bilal, who has become a staunch LGBTQ+ ally (136). Habib’s final chapter applies the lessons in self-exploration, resilience, and communally caring for one another that helped them navigate the larger world abroad.
Habib ends with a letter to their seven-year-old self as a “re-parenting” tool. This letter allows Habib to address not only themself but also younger readers who may identify with the uncertainty and anxiety Habib faced as a child. The letter allows Habib to rhetorically highlight a certain aspect of their audience while ending on words of hope to counteract the bleak political backdrop of Chapter 12. The letter uses repetition of the command “Breathe,” physically separating out the paragraphs on the page that contain Habib’s words to their younger self (139). The command is directed both to themself and readers, creating literal space on the page between paragraphs of information and reminding the audience to figuratively allow themself room to breathe.
The letter uses words with strong connotations of safety, comfort, and nurturing such as “kind,” “forgiving,” “safety,” etc. (139). Habib’s private and comforting tone in the letter offers a sense of safety and closure, both within their own narrative and for the audience. Habib nurtures Shireen in Chapter 9 with the “wisdom of [their] lesbian moms” (105). Habib’s letter represents the essence of the wisdom they have gathered throughout their life. As with Shireen, Habib tells the audience “what [they] needed to hear at their age” (105) through the rhetorical maneuver of addressing their younger self.
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